Lost Drabbles
by Haiza Tyri
Summary: One drabble for every episode of Lost. Every drabble is from the point of view of non-main-storyline-of-the-episode character and has to do with something other than the main storyline. Random subjects, largely examination of the corners of stories and investigation of characters' thoughts and motivations. Rated T, just in case. Never M, never slash, never rude language.
1. Impressions

**_Season 1_**

**Pilot**

_Impressions_

An escaped murderer, a con artist, a failure, a paralyzed man, a dying woman, a food addict, an estranged father, an oppressive husband. The true identities behind the normal-looking people boarding a normal-looking plane bound for normal places. First impressions of a handsome man, a pretty girl, a warrior, a doctor, with ordinary lives and ordinary stories, are wrong.

So are second impressions. The murderer rushes to help and build. The con artist is a lonely orphan. The dying woman lives a long, happy life.

You are not the sum of first impressions, or even second. No one is ordinary.


	2. Trust

**Tabula Rasa**

_Trust_

She wished they hadn't trusted her.

She wanted them to trust her. She didn't want anyone to know; she wanted a clean start, as if nothing had ever happened, she had never done all the things she had done. She wanted to just be _normal,_ like all of them.

But she wished they hadn't trusted her. They had given her something she didn't deserve, and someday, when they found out the truth, they would take it away again, the kindness dying in their eyes. They'd trusted her, and she was a little afraid of what she would do with it.


	3. Fishing

**Walkabout**

_Fishing_

It's just using what you have. It's a kind of currency: in a world where the only currency is interactions between people, beauty and sweet talking a boy are worth a lot. Has Boone done anything useful since he's been here? No. He's run around looking eager, failing at everything he's tried to do. You got a fish. You went out and procured a fish, without having to walk into a grocery store. It's actually quite an achievement, especially when no one ever taught you how to do anything useful.

Daddy, why didn't you ever teach me how to fish?


	4. Reach

**White Rabbit**

_Reach_

What would make a man tell his son he's not good enough? Not a lack of love, certainly. Christian Shephard loves the little boy standing before him with the battered face and wounded eyes so much it scares him. It's fear, he knows, deep down in his subconscious. Fear that his own failures will come to light, leak out onto that little boy. And in the end it's love, because if that little boy never sets his bar too high, he can never be disappointed in himself.

_Don't reach for the stars, kid, because you'll be crushed by the fall._


	5. Redshirts

**House of the Rising Sun**

_Redshirts_

Nobody ever does anything. One man tries to murder another while a woman and a little boy scream, and all the ones who are not Candidates stand in the background and watch. They are the minor characters in their own lives on this Island of Jacob's, and they can do nothing without being told to do it by a Candidate, in this world where their usual, ingrained roles are stripped away. They have no volition of their own. In the end, they mean nothing. That's just the way it is in Jacob's World.

Ben Linus has not learned this yet.


	6. Dad

**The Moth**

_Dad_

Walt watched his father with wonder. His dad could _do_ stuff. Doctor Jack was supposed to be the person who saved people's lives, and Mr. Locke was the person who did cool things, while his dad just yelled at him a lot—_Don't do that! Come over here. Go to sleep. Stay right here while the adults do all the fun things—_but now his dad was the one saving people and knowing how to do cool things. Walt had somehow learned to think of his dad as a failure—wasn't that why his mom left him?—but not anymore.


	7. The man

**Confidence Man**

_The man_

The only thing about that time he remembered later, after Mommy got out of the hospital and Daddy got out of jail, was the man, and the man's eyes. Daddy said it was all the man's fault that he'd beat up Mommy, because he was trying to hurt them, but the man wasn't the one who beat up Mommy. He remembered how he and the man looked into each other's eyes, and the man looked sad, and he ran away. First he tried to get Daddy to stop yelling, and then he ran away. It wasn't his fault at all.


	8. Hurley

**Solitary**

_Hurley_

No one would have thought to call Hurley a leader, least of all Hurley. He was a comic figure, and comic figures are not leaders.

But Hurley made you feel safe, with a golf course, and Hurley made you laugh, and Hurley made you like people. Hurley knew, without knowing he knew, how to bring people together, how to look beyond basic necessities to what makes humans human and what makes life worth living. He went beyond the simplistic viewpoint of the spinal surgeon and gave you an afternoon where life was more than mere survival. Hurley was a leader.


	9. Too hard

**Raised By Another**

_Too hard_

Any of his family or friends could have told Claire this was how it would be. Thomas had always been an enthusiastic boy for new things. He wanted to try everything. Unicycling, Peruvian food, studying Mandarin, tap dance, having a baby. He tried them all. And then the moment they turned out to be too hard or not what he expected, he dropped them. He liked new things, just not working for them. He got overwhelmed and ran away. Art was the only thing that had stuck, and he wasn't terribly good at that. If only someone had warned her.


	10. Claire

**All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues**

_Claire_

All he wanted to do was protect Claire. And the baby, of course. Over the many days since the plane crash, he'd kept an eye out for her, observed how isolated she was, how everyone was so busy and so preoccupied with themselves that they didn't notice how fragile she was. Even the one person who seemed to want to help only did it to assure himself that he was fine, to cover his own past failures. She needed _him._

Not like _that._ No, Ethan was a doctor, and he was going to take care of Claire and her baby.


	11. Decent

**Whatever The Case May Be**

_Decent_

The bank manager decided later that he would do it again.

He'd been analyzed and used. They'd known that he, like most ordinary people, would never let an innocent person be killed in a bank robbery when he could prevent it. So they staged a little innocent-person-in-danger scene to manipulate him, the pretty girl and her tough boyfriend. They'd used his basic decent impulses against him and his bank.

But he would do it again. Because his basic decent impulses were _decent._ They were human. They were good. So what if the girl wasn't innocent? He'd done what was right.


	12. Study

**Hearts And Minds**

_Study_

It was amazing what you could learn when you were willing to study. Sure, Locke had had his foundation laid when he was a Boy Scout, but that had only lasted so long. It wasn't until he spent four years in a wheelchair that he began reading everything he could find about woodcraft, about jungles, about hunting, about the rituals and traditions of nearly every native society he could. Four years of reading, researching, studying, and he could _do_ all these things. The gift the Island had given him was an opportunity to discover what he truly was capable of.


	13. The nanny

**Special**

_The nanny_

You can't live very long in another person's household without learning a few family secrets. Like the fact that Walt's father doesn't really like him. Like the fact that Walt's mother cares more for her law career and her rich, important husband than for the truth about where and how a young boy should thrive. Like the fact that letters come faithfully from America for Walt, some fat, some slim, and are put away in a box and he is never allowed to see them. Like the fact that Walt has been deprived of the chance to have a father.


	14. Giving

**Homecoming**

_Giving_

He'd never have thought that good-hearted, giving people existed anymore, certainly not among the moneyed, posh set. Of course, Lucy was at least half in love with him, but he'd had girls in love with him before, and they'd never given him a job, bought him a suit, driven him to his first day of work. Her dad could so easily have told him to leave his little girl alone, but instead he admired him, for succeeding at being in a band. He and Lucy both gave to him freely and didn't see him for the pathetic loser he was.


	15. Voices

**Outlaws**

_Voices_

He could never tell Sawyer what the voices had said, for what man can tell another (especially one like Sawyer) what the voices of his dead say to him? In the whispers he heard Essam, accusing him, and Omar, calling him a traitor. He heard his mother saying she loved him, quiet acceptance in her voice, and his brother's anguished, painful sobbing. He tried very hard not to hear Nadia, because she was alive, she had to be, they'd promised him she was. He could not tell Sawyer these things, though it was only the ravings of his own brain.


	16. Savage

**In Translation**

_Savage_

I'm afraid they're going to go all _Lord of the Flies._ That's what happens when people crash on deserted islands, isn't it? They devolve into territorial savages?

I'm one of the quiet ones. I talk to Steve sometimes, but mostly I stay to myself, just waiting for the day when everything blows up into anarchy. I expected it the day half of us decided to live in the caves. It almost happened today, when Jin and Michael went at it hammer and tongs. What is this, the Wild West? If anyone starts anything, they will. I pray it never happens.


	17. Threat

**Numbers**

_Threat_

She has been alone for so long, alone with nothing but the whispers in the jungle and the memory of the people who took Alex. She has never seen anyone since then, except Sayid, and now this man, this big young man, and she would never have thought, after all this time, that she could still see goodness. But she sees his sweetness, his humor, his big-heartedness, and behind them she sees his heartbreak, and that is why the furious threat from him makes her lower her gun, because she recognizes his heartache and knows that it is no threat.


	18. Mother

**Deus Ex Machina**

_Mother_

Emily knew him the moment she saw him, and for just a moment her heart yearned out for him. Her son, that tiny baby in her arms, whom she had never seen since he went away in a nurse's arms. She'd always imagined him growing up in a wealthy, beautiful home with doting adoptive parents. She hadn't expected to see him grown old, working in a store like this, talking about foster, not adoptive, families.

It was all Anthony's idea. All she wanted was some money. She hadn't expected to fall in love with her baby boy all over again.


	19. Community

**Do No Harm**

_Community _

The first time Jin felt a part of anything on this Island was when he rushed to the aid of a screaming woman. Out of the garble of English sounds, he caught "Jack" and ran for help, throwing himself into the community. Then he sat for hours with a boy worried enough to be the actual father while the girl gave birth. He should have gone back to his work, or to his solitary fire, planning ways to improve the boat to get off this horrible Island, but instead he stayed, because he was part of what was going on.


	20. Sheep

**The Greater Good**

_Sheep_

It's clear to me that we have become sheep.

I heard Kate say to someone that we had to get Jack back so something could be done about Boone—his body, I mean. She said everyone was scared and didn't know what to do, so naturally she had to go running after Jack. We can't even bury a brave young man who died horribly without the great Jack here to tell us to do it?

Jack, apparently he is God, and Kate is his prophet. She's not a bad prophet, but he's a pretty lousy deity, in my humble opinion.


	21. Scary

**Born To Run**

_Scary_

It's not because of Boone Walt is afraid of Locke now. Well, not completely. Clearly Locke had something to do with it, though of course no one will talk to a kid about it. No one would talk to a kid about things except Locke himself, so Walt finds his own faint fear of him slightly sad. But there's more to it, and he doesn't exactly know what it is. He keeps seeing something in his mind, something scary that's going to happen, and that thing he wants to open, the deep hole in the ground, is only the beginning.


	22. Destiny

**Exodus**

_Destiny_

He decided the first time he saw him that John Locke would be the one. Jacob might have this whole complex scheme for narrowing down the Candidates, but Locke was his Candidate, end of story. He was the perfect stooge, because he seemed so strong and knowledgeable and was so weak and manipulable. His wide-eyed innocence the first time they met, coupled with his sense that the Island had a plan for him, coupled with his absolute idiocy: the perfect Candidate.

But he had assumed that they had a bond, and he still needed to be punished for his presumption.

* * *

**Author's note: I know it's a bit cheating to do one drabble for a three-part episode, but hey, they're my drabbles. ;P**


	23. Routine

**_Season 2_**

**Man of Science, Man of Faith**

_Routine_

After a while it's the routine that keeps you sane. Wake up, put in the numbers, press the button, put on some music, exercise, take a shower, eat, read a book, press the button, go back to bed, every hundred and eight minutes over and over, round and round, where there's no such thing as a day or night, only a hundred and eight minutes repeating itself. If you stick to the routine and try not to think, you can fool yourself into believing that you _want_ to be down here.

Then one hundred and eight minutes there's an explosion.


	24. Steamroller

**Adrift**

_Steamroller_

It was only when she was dying that she realized she'd lied. She'd convinced Michael that she only wanted what was best for Walt and that he would be doing what was best too. But it wasn't the truth. She'd only wanted what was best for her. She'd taken Walt from his father, because she wanted an international career. She could give him everything he needed, she said, but she never could give him a father, which he needed more than he needed those expensive schools. And she had taken the only thing Michael needed and fulfilled her own desires.


	25. Faith

**Orientation**

_Faith_

I don't see the point of what these men are arguing about. Alarms do not go off every hundred eight minutes for no reason.

But of course Jack must turn it into a power struggle, and Locke must make it a question of faith. Faith in what, I wonder? How can you have faith without something to have faith _in?_ Locke wants to believe everything will "work out" but melts down when it doesn't. Jack is too desperately afraid to believe it will.

But that is not the point. I have fixed the computer, and the alarm is going off.


	26. Rose

**Everybody Hates Hugo**

_Rose_

Bernard misses Rose. During the chaos, the fear, the pain, all the deaths, while he's fighting to survive, one of the few things he can think of is what it feels like to have Rose torn away like this. Of course she's dead. Of course she has to be dead, after that. But some part of him insists on hoping she's alive, or refusing to believe she's dead.

Then news comes that they've captured some people, and while Ana Lucia insists they're Them, desperately he hopes they're survivors of the plane crash too, because if they are, maybe she is.


	27. Miscalculation

**…And Found**

_Miscalculation_

Well, Jae hadn't expected her to react like _that._ He thought she'd be pleased, and relieved, like he was, that they had each found a congenial, like-minded friend and could get their parents off their backs, as they say in America. She'd seemed so sensible and good-humored. She hadn't seemed to want a romance any more than he had. So why should she suddenly change her mind and act disappointed (though graciously, he admitted)? When he was in America, he'd thought he understood Korean women, but now it seemed he hadn't understood them any more than he'd understood American women.


	28. Too long

**Abandoned**

_Too long_

You know you've been on a deserted island in the South Pacific for too long when a hut cobbled together out of airplane parts, tarps, and bamboo and beautified by flowers stuck in plastic bottles looks like pure luxury. You know you've been away from the world for too long when your best friend is a dog, and you don't even like dogs. You know you've been stuck in freak-show land too long when the man you're kissing apologizes wryly for his gun and you don't even think it strange that you're kissing a man who carries a gun around.


	29. Reconnaissance

**The Other 48 Days**

_Reconnaissance _

Goodwin didn't know what Ben thought he was doing. He'd sent him here to do reconnaissance, so what was with sending others for a quick snatch-and-grab? The point of reconnaissance was that you had to do it before it was any use. This ridiculous idea of Ben's was going to make these survivors panic, and panicking people were dangerous. Look at what the big Nigerian had done to Ben's kidnapping team. Goodwin had known these two men, vaguely, and seeing them with their heads smashed in was a shock.

Of course, Ben knew what he was doing. He always did.


	30. Followers

**Collision**

_Followers_

So they did it. Libby and Bernard. Bernard wished he had the conviction to do what Eko did. He wished he had the demeanor to get away with it. Libby was ashamed that she'd been afraid, when deep down she'd known Ana Lucia would not hurt her. Together they tied up the dark man, whose only crime was watching his girl be killed and attacking the people who did it. They didn't do it because they thought it was right but because they were followers. Libby wondered what her psychiatrist would say about that. Bernard wondered what Rose would say.


	31. Father

**What Kate Did**

_Father_

A sergeant in the U.S. Army Rangers sits at his desk and cries. A big man, worn and grizzled, who has seen much service and is an example to the boys who come into the recruiting station wanting to be just like him. He cries because his little girl isn't really his little girl and because he failed to protect her. A soldier who has protected his country but couldn't protect his child from the man who was father to her only in blood and from the streak of darkness in her that was all that father ever gave her.


	32. Shepherd

**The 23rd Psalm**

_Shepherd_

A born killer? No, a born protector. That was what I realized about my brother, much later, when he had become a drug lord and I a priest. Perhaps he learned to kill easily, under the guidance of those born killers who stole him from me, but the first time it was not easy. What was easy was the choice to protect his little brother Yemi. He was always protecting me, from the older boys, from the hunger and grief of orphanhood. I always ran to Eko in my fear, and he always protected me, my big brother, my shepherd.


	33. Sawyer

**The Hunting Party**

_Sawyer_

James sure did respond to that question about his alias. He responded with such venom that Locke knew he'd hit on something big. All he'd really wanted to know was whether he'd named himself after Tom Sawyer. It seemed appropriate. Wild Southern kid, despising authority, neither following nor leading, taking pleasure in putting one over on others, wanting a life of freedom but not wanting to give up the pleasures of a comfortable life. With a few things gone drastically wrong in his life, Mark Twain's young Tom Sawyer might have grown up to be just like James 'Sawyer' Ford.


	34. Piano

**Fire + Water**

_Piano_

Liam was always jealous of that piano. That Christmas he received more presents than he had ever received before, and he knew that they were to make up for the fact that he had never received a present as epic as The Piano. He knew Charlie deserved it. He knew Charlie had something special and that the piano was going to help him develop it. But he liked music too. Everyone said he had a nice singing voice. But Charlie received the piano, and Charlie was the one who was going to make something of himself, and them. Not Liam.


	35. Waiting

**The Long Con**

_Waiting_

She sits in the Sageflower Motel in Sioux City, Iowa, and she cries, because she knows he's never coming. She knew it from the moment she opened the bag and found the same pieces of newspaper masquerading as money. Her money. But still she's been sitting, waiting, hoping, in the most ridiculous manner, because she knows he won't come. She'd believed him when he said he was running a con on her, because that was so much like him, but she'd never thought the honesty was a con too. She believed he loved her. Now she's alone, and she's pregnant.


	36. Coincidence

**One of Them**

_Coincidence_

The world is a small place. An American sergeant has dealings with an Iraqi who will be stranded on an Island with his daughter. The Iraqi has dealings with a DIA agent who will be trapped on that Island with a Scottish man who once met a doctor who failed to treat the dying father of the girl the Iraqi will fall in love with on that Island. The doctor will be stranded on that Island with his half-sister, the daughter of a man the conman and the cop on that Island each met.

Jacob knows it is no coincidence.


	37. Help

**Maternity Leave**

_Help_

Libby likes to help. She likes people to have nice feelings about her. That's why she told them she was a psychologist, because psychologists help people. Not a doctor. Despite the year of medical school, she doesn't know enough medicine to pass herself off as a doctor, but she does know psychology. Having it practiced on you gives you a certain familiarity, if you pay attention. Now the pretty girl with the baby comes to her for help, and she knows what to do. They did it to her, after all, and it helped, and now she can help Claire.


	38. Question

**The Whole Truth**

_Question_

Honestly, Ana Lucia believed Henry. She believed he was Henry Gale, a weird little balloonist. But there was just that little question, in the corner of her mind, the same question she'd had about Nathan and ignored. With Nathan it was that surely no one could be that stupid. With Henry it was something about the way he looked up out of those big eyes of his, with a kind of calculation.

Sayid had seen it too. But Sayid was too convinced that Henry was the Big Bad Guy. Maybe she could keep Sayid from doing what she had done.


	39. The Loop

**Lockdown**

_The Loop_

I overheard Hurley talking to Jack today, and once again, Hurley says what we're all thinking. I didn't catch what Jack asked him, but Hurley said he couldn't help, because he wasn't in the loop. Jack said, "There is no loop," the big hypocrite. Idealist is more like it. He thinks there isn't a loop because he's so far in it he can't tell. Actually, there are a dozen loops. There's the Hatch loop, and the Hero loop, and the Great White Hunters loop, the Heroin Plane loop… I'm not part of any of them, but I know they're there.


	40. Escape

**Dave**

_Escape_

Henry could have escaped. But maybe he is escaping?

He's one of the Others, obviously, like Ethan, like Goodwin. But what if he's running from them? What if that was how he got caught in Rousseau's trap, running from them to us? And then he remembered the Henry Gale man they found—maybe killed—and thought that would be a better story than "I'm running away from my own people."

The fact is, he could have escaped and didn't, even after the arrow and the armory and Sayid. He and Locke shared something, and now Locke wants to believe him.


	41. Simplicity

**S.O.S.**

_Simplicity_

It's been easy to fall back into the rhythm of being a cop. Of course, sitting on a couch reading a book outside an armory containing a little man who's part of a crazed sort of jungle gang isn't precisely like driving in a squad car with your partner; trying to find something to do in this bizarre Hatch while a bald guy on crutches pushes a button every 108 minutes doesn't bear any resemblance to desk duty. But she's a cop again. Guard, protect, lay down the law. It's simple now, knowing who she is and what she's doing.


	42. Lying

**Two for the Road**

_Lying_

Teresa always knew when her daughter was lying. She couldn't always prove it, and then she had to let it go, no matter what she had been doing, because Teresa was a police officer, and police officers acted on evidence. But she always knew, as she knew now, and she knew Ana Lucia's resignation was the best thing, because no one would be able to prove it, and even if they had, Teresa didn't know what she would do. She was a mother before she was a police officer, and she didn't think she could send her daughter to prison.


	43. Experiment

**?**

_Experiment_

He conducts his own social experiments. What else is there to do, after all? Put the two men of faith together and find out what happens. There's the criminal with the priest's heart and the valiant searcher whose faith is so easily crushed. Who will overcome the other? Send them out to find hatches and see what they do with what they find. He's always been interested in social experiments, unlike Jacob, who sits back and lets things happen.

That little Ben fellow, now, who stumbles around trying to lead the people _he_ once led. He could be interesting too.


	44. Wrong

**Three Minutes**

_Wrong_

Alex couldn't help feeling that what they were doing was ridiculous. Sure, she'd been doing it all her life, but it was ridiculous. Dressing up, creeping about, pretending to be what they weren't. Whatever it was that a normal life was supposed to be like, this wasn't it.

She knew for certain that it was wrong, too. When they stole that boy, when they stole the pregnant girl, when they were planning to take her baby from her—she knew what was wrong when she saw it, and she wasn't going to just let it happen, Dad or no Dad.


	45. Reproduction

**Live Together, Die Alone**

_Reproduction_

It's the way it's always been. Reproduction isn't possible on the Island, and they have to perpetuate themselves as a people, both to care for the Island and because it's in the nature of humans to perpetuate themselves. Bea isn't ashamed of the way they have to do it, not anymore. When you lack what you need, you have to steal to get it. It's been the way of tribes and nations for millennia. Look at the Sabine Women. Those Outsiders in their comfortable lives are so spoiled. Americans are the worst.

Bea forgets that she used to be American.


	46. Ozymandias

**_Season 3_**

**A Tale of Two Cities**

_Ozymandias_

He didn't know that the day of the plane crash was the day his kingdom started to crumble.

He didn't know that kidnapping Walt was the beginning of his downfall.

He didn't know that being Henry Gale had got him shot as a child.

He didn't know that taunting Locke from his powerful position of weakness would lead him to kill what he had always worshipped.

He didn't know that casting out his rival would bring about the death of what he most prized.

He didn't know the day the plane crashed that he was going to lose it all.


	47. Lessons

**Further Instructions**

_Friend_

Eddie liked John, genuinely liked him. He was a nice man. Innocent, with a sunny smile and a darkness of pain in his eyes. They didn't tell you in the academy what it felt like to betray someone you genuinely liked, someone you didn't even think was a bad guy. A gentle, angry man just looking for a family, finding it in the wrong places. He wished it had been someone else, caught up in this drug-running commune. A mean guy he could send to jail and feel good about. It didn't seem right to do it to a friend.


	48. Friend

**Further Instructions**

_Friend_

Eddie liked John, genuinely liked him. He was a nice man. Innocent, with a sunny smile and a darkness of pain in his eyes. They didn't tell you in the academy what it felt like to betray someone you genuinely liked, someone you didn't even think was a bad guy. A gentle, angry man just looking for a family, finding it in the wrong places. He wished it had been someone else, caught up in this drug-running commune. A mean guy he could send to jail and feel good about. It didn't seem right to do it to a friend.


	49. Patience

**Every Man For Himself**

_Patience_

She'd become one of them and hated herself with everything in her for the things she did. Playing Ben's games. Manipulating Shephard. Holding a gun on Austen. With every action she looked like one of them to their captives. Two years ago she would have wanted to scream, "I just want to escape, just like you!" when Jack looked at her with such dark hatred. Now she went along with it and did everything Ben said, because that was the only way she could lull him into complacency, so when she did escape, he wouldn't be able to stop her.


	50. Cheeseburgers

**The Cost Of Living**

_Cheeseburgers_

It was amazing how they worked so hard to live as though they were still back in America. Cheeseburgers and roasts and CDs and book clubs and yellow houses in the suburbs. Why even bother? They _weren't_ Americans. They didn't believe in freedom.

She'd lied to Jack, of course. She didn't kill the cow. That wasn't one of her jobs. It wasn't even beef. But she had learned how to render animal fat, which was not all that hard, and how to bake hamburger buns, which was hard. And when she got back home, she was never doing it again.

* * *

**Author's note: Yes, two chapters from Juliet's POV in a row. I didn't intend to do that. But I find her endlessly fascinating.**


	51. Hate

**I Do**

_Hate_

What goes through you when your daughter says she hates you and hopes you'll die is worse than any other kind of pain you've experienced. You think your father's beatings were pain? They were nothing. Of course it's just a phase. You've been given to understand that teenagers are like that. But most teenagers don't go around actively trying to sabotage their father's work, and most teenagers, when you tell them you're dying, don't say they don't care. You really expect that kind of news to pull her up short and make her reevaluate things.

Alex doesn't, and Ben grieves.


	52. Bus

**Not In Portland**

_Bus_

Richard contacted Ben.

"She won't come. Her self-confidence has been eroded, and she's scared to death of her ex-husband."

"We always knew that would be a problem we can fix, Richard. She belongs on the Island, and when she comes, she'll learn to see herself for the brilliant woman she is."

"She says she can only come if he gets hit by a bus."

He remembered the first time he'd ever heard of automobiles, when the Dharma Initiative brought them to the Island.

"Then have him hit by a bus, Richard."

Richard sighed and went out to hire a bus.


	53. Fate

**Flashes Before Your Eyes**

_Fate_

She'd come to the point where it no longer mattered. Life, death, everything in between. People were born, people died. Fate had taken over. All she had to do was make sure people didn't try to mess things up. So the young man, who wanted to do better this time, make his girl happy, that beautiful Penelope she knew so well, what he wanted didn't matter. It never did.

It had happened to her long ago, the sudden death of her fight to change and control things. It happened when she found out about her son. After that nothing mattered.


	54. Danger

**Stranger In A Strange Land**

_Danger_

Isabelle had been waiting for a chance to do something about Juliet. She'd never trusted her. Ben did, but Ben always trusted his ability to get what he wanted. He was better at it than anyone Isabelle had ever seen, but she thought he'd met his match in Juliet. She'd integrated well, as well as Isabelle herself, but Isabelle could see that the longer Ben kept her there, the more determined she'd get. She was no longer the shrinking violet of three years ago but a strong woman and an instinctive liar. She might be the death of them all.


	55. Skeletor

**Tricia Tanaka Is Dead**

_Skeletor_

In the future, and the past, Sawyer will remember finding Roger's head, when he meets him with his head actually on his shoulders and his jumpsuit that says "Roger, Workman," and it will slightly freak him out. He'll remember Hurley's scolding eulogy to "Skeletor" ("That guy had a mom, a family, and friends! You should respect the dead!"), and he'll think to himself, _And he had a kid he beat every night and turned into Mr. Creeptastic._ Eventually he'll regret sitting jocularly with the Halloween-decoration-like skeleton and toasting him with his Dharma beer, because Roger Linus didn't deserve even that.


	56. Soldier

**Enter 77**

_Soldier_

"We can't risk it, you know the rules."

"There's still a way out."

"We won't let them into the territory. You know what to do. It's an order. Just do it, Mikhail!"

Mikhail stares at Bea. Outside, everything happens in a flash, but inside his head, there's an eternity. He considers what she is asking. He weighs it against orders, against consequences. He considers the future. He decides orders are worth following. He has always been a good soldier. But there will be no future.

"Forgive me."

He aims his gun at the woman he loves and pulls the trigger.

* * *

**I wasn't the one who came up with the idea for Mikhail to love Bea. I read it in some other Lost fic, and the actor himself said he played the scene that way. The idea has always stuck with me.**


	57. Football

**Par Avion**

_Football_

Sure, Jack played football with Tom. He played chess with Ben, too. What else was he was supposed to do? Sit in his pretty yellow house and pout that they were being nice to him?

It wasn't like he trusted them. If anything, he was getting them to trust him. Conning the conmen, which they definitely were. Lulling them into complacency. Thanks to Sawyer, he had experience with that now.

Anyway, they were actually very nice people, when they weren't kidnapping kids and locking people in cages for the horrendous crime of being in a plane crash on their island.


	58. Alex

**The Man From Tallahassee**

_Alex_

The doubt came again when the dark man called her name. She'd thought she could try to make up for it, what she said, by saving her dad's life from the bald man with the gun, but the dark man called her by her name, and he said _they_ wanted her to believe her mother was dead, which of course she was!

But of course she knew her dad was a liar, had known for quite a long time. He said whatever he wanted to get people to do whatever he wanted. What if he was lying to her, too?


	59. Calculation

**Exposé**

_Calculation_

Back at the Barracks, in "civilization," when she contemplated that her first thought had been a calculated analysis of how she might manipulate the survivors' doctor, Juliet realized what the Island had done to her. What They had done to her, what Ben had done to her. He'd turned her into a version of himself. She saw an innocent man, was party to the plans for his kidnapping, and all she thought was how she could use him. He was her first chance of escape, her first hope in three years. But she _wasn't_ Ben. She wasn't. She was different.


	60. Dislocated

**Left Behind**

_Dislocated_

"Right, now hold your body like this." Ethan started to show her, then stopped. "I'm not trying anything, I promise."

Juliet nodded. He was teaching her to fight, not something she'd ever wanted to learn, but after all the discussions with Richard and Ben about Island dangers…She was willing to learn. Not that she'd have the courage, if it ever came down to it.

"How's it going?" Ben wandered over to say an hour later, just in time for Juliet's shriek of pain.

Shoulder dislocation number two. Last time it was her husband, and he wasn't teaching her to fight.


	61. Jungle

**One of Us**

_Jungle_

Back into the jungle they went. They had come from the jungle, and they could return to it. A decade of living in little yellow houses with ovens and sprinkler systems had not taken away their origins. They were people who could pick up and leave at a moment's notice, dwellers in tents. Like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Ben thought, with some amusement. The Island was their home, not a little yellow house. Still, they'd been getting dependent on their comforts lately, made clear to him by his time with the survivors. It was time they returned to the jungle.


	62. Search

**Catch 22**

_Search_

Penny's activities were hardly a mystery to her father. A great deal of money she had, but she still had much to learn about stealth, if she wanted to hide them from him. Maybe she didn't want to hide them from him. Maybe she was flaunting her search for her lover in his face. But Charles had always known how to get what he wanted, and he wanted to find what she was looking for before she did. He already knew what she was going to find. It was his, and he was going to stake his claim once more.


	63. Fisherman

**D.O.C**

_Fisherman_

What will a man not give up for his only son?

He will give up even his own son. He'll see the boy struggling for a life beyond what he can give, and he'll generously fling himself wide and say, "Go," though it was his dream to have his son follow in his footsteps. He'll be willing to sacrifice his own need to see his child so that the boy will have a future.

Jin will never know what all the people in his life have done to get him where he is. He thinks he did it all himself.


	64. Betrayal

**The Brig**

_Betrayal_

The disappointment had been sinking in for quite some time. He'd believed in Ben for so long, since the first time he saw him in the jungle. He'd seen what Ben's own people were blind to, that he had a connection to the Island, that he was a leader, that he had what it took to find Jacob's Candidate. He'd loved Ben like a son.

But Ben had betrayed him and what they stood for. He'd wanted the power, not the responsibility, and now he was going to do whatever it took to keep on being the man in charge.


	65. Parallels

**The Man Behind The Curtain**

_Parallels_

A father stumbles home drunk. His child meets him, takes off his shoes, tries not to respond to his words. Resentment grows hot inside. The years of brutality take their toll. A child grows up to kill a father, thinking it's for the best, it's for someone else, it's a sacrifice to help another. With the father's death, a new life begins, of running, betrayal, friendship, fear, love, freedom, leadership, a life the child never had before.

Ben Linus reads Kate Austen's file and wonders if part of himself has been reborn in her. That's why he gives her coffee.


	66. Generations

**Greatest Hits**

_Generations_

It is in the nature of youth to rebel. The younger generation looks on what its elders have done and despises it. Sometimes the younger generation is right. The world over, youths have stood up and said "You people have destroyed our world. We're taking it back."

I read that in a book, and that's what me and Alex are doing. I mean, Alex and I. We're staging a revolution against the adults—against her dad—because what they've been doing is wrong. The younger generation will do what's right for the Island _and_ for the people who come here.


	67. Ingratitude

**Through The Looking Glass**

_Ingratitude_

So that's what it comes down to. You rescue a baby from a life of wretched misery or an early death at the hands of a madwoman. You defy your leader to let her live. Though you are single and inexperienced, you raise her yourself. You dote on her, play with her, make her giggle, hold her when she cries. She is precious to you, and you begin to train her for leadership

All for this. For her to betray you. Not just a teenage rebellion over a boy. Actual betrayal of your leadership. After all you've done for her.


	68. Abandonment

**_Season 4_**

**The Beginning of the End**

_Abandonment_

Against his own inclinations, he'd been forced to be a leader, and he discovered that he'd always been meant to be one. Thanks to his father, he never believed he could be a good leader. Thanks to the Island, he discovered that he had it in him to lead. Driven by his demons, he still _tried_ to do what was best, to protect, to shepherd, to provide to heal. His drive was always, _Save these people._

So what does a leader do when his people abandon him? The people he had emptied himself out for? Jack stood watching them leave.


	69. Curse

**Confirmed Dead**

_Curse_

The only way to get some good out of a curse like Miles' was to literally get some good out of it. Like a big, fat wad of cash.

"Oh, how wonderful that you have a gift to use for the good of humanity!" some woman had gushed one time. A _gift?_ What an idiot. How would _you_ like to hear _from_ dead people how they died?

But this way, he could at least make it work for him. That lady got her grandson to leave her alone, and Miles got a wad of cash. That was how it worked.


	70. Desmond

**The Economist**

_Desmond_

_Oh, hello, Desmond._ Inside the slightly rattling workings of his brain, Daniel didn't bother to be surprised at seeing the Scotsman who had ruined his life more than ten years before. Of course he would be here. It had started with him, and now it seemed it just might end with him.

He hadn't absolutely known he would find him here. It seemed likely, but even Daniel couldn't predict the future, not like his mother. He didn't bother to speak to him, either. Clearly Desmond didn't recognize him, so it hadn't happened yet. He had to wait until it happened.


	71. Annexation

**Eggtown**

_Annexation_

It's not just having lived on a beach for so long, slept on the ground, lived out in the weather, hauled water by hand. It's not just having gone without music and coffee and showers and beds. After all, it's only been three months. You can get used to the normal luxuries of modern life again pretty quickly. The weird thing, Claire thinks, looking around at their new yellow houses, is the fact that you've just gone and taken over someone else's house. It can never be your own, the way a tarpaulin lean-to on the beach was your own.


	72. 7946-0893

**Constant**

_7946-0893_

It was the look of terror in his eyes that kept coming back to her. Over the days that followed, it was the terror that made her think, _He really meant it. He really has to call me in eight years, or something terrible will happen._

It was because of that that she kept track of Desmond, rather than trying to put him out of her life. It was because of that that when he disappeared, she refused to believe he was dead and instead spent three years in a wild, insane search for the man who had left her.


	73. VALIS

**The Other Woman**

_VALIS_

Again it seemed like John had some unconscious knowledge when it came to his book choices. Of course _VALIS_ was mostly nonsense, but some of its ideas came so close to the reality that Ben knew as the Island that he had sometimes wondered if Philip K. Dick had not had a dream of the Island, or had been born here and left, or had worked, like the DeGroots, to try to find it and, failing, had invented _VALIS_ instead. Again Ben hated John Locke for his connection to his beloved Island and taunted him with his lack of understanding.


	74. Strong

**Ji Yeon**

_Strong_

Some days she thinks she ought to be grateful to the Island, and to Ben. Once she wouldn't have been able to fight for Sun's life. She would've accepted the decision and lived with Sun's death for the rest of her life. Now she's unafraid of the confrontation and knows she's strong enough to win. The Island and Ben have beaten her weakness out of her, day after day, for three years. And how she hates them for it. Her strength doesn't make her a better person. It's just the same old Juliet, fighting for survival in a new way.


	75. Mercenary

**Meet Kevin Johnson**

_Mercenary_

Just your common or garden variety mercenary, was how Keamy thought of himself. Just like anybody else whose government spent over a million dollars to train and then decided he wasn't worth it. Just a guy who had this training and had to do something with it. Even an ex-special-forces man with a dishonorable discharge had to live. And every man had a right to make a living doing what he liked. Some men liked building things, so they were construction workers, like Keamy's dad. Keamy liked killing things and making money, in that order, so he was a mercenary.


	76. Daddy

**The Shape of Things To Come**

_Daddy_

Daddy, save me! Daddy, I'll be your little girl again—Daddy, I'll never rebel again—I have nobody now—Mom is dead, Karl is dead—and they never meant as much as you did, Daddy—remember swinging, how I would hold on tight, terrified and thrilled at the same time, waiting for you to push me up so high I was afraid I would die and knowing that if I ever fell you would catch me?—catch me, Daddy—he's going to kill me, and I don't know what's going on—I never have known what's going on—Daddy, please—


	77. Lapidus

**Something Nice Back Home**

_Lapidus_

He didn't sign up for this. He wasn't precisely sure what he signed up for, but it wasn't wholesale murder, or murder at all, wholesale or retail. Somehow he'd known, when he saw the footage of the wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815, that he should have been flying that plane. Maybe if he had, it wouldn't have crashed. Maybe it would have crashed, but the deaths of all those people wouldn't have been faked. Whatever the case, he was _supposed_ to help find out the truth, which did not involve murdering all the people who were supposed to be dead.


	78. Special

**Cabin Fever**

_Special_

Richard found out later that everything happened the way it was supposed to, but to begin with he didn't know what way it was supposed to happen. Jacob didn't even tell him much. So Richard did it his own way, going Out There to find a little boy named John Locke and to try and to keep trying to craft him into the man he had already met. Nothing he tried worked. The small boy cheated on his own precognition; the teenager passionately refused to be different. Eventually Richard learned that this was precisely who he was supposed to be.


	79. Acceptance

**There's No Place Like Home**

_Acceptance_

"We're going to move the Island," Locke and Mr. Creepy Ben say. Alright, then, let's move the Island. Let's go to a greenhouse and move a massive Island. The weird thing is that by now it's not all that weird. After everything we've been through, Smoke Monsters, cabins that move around, Locke never dying, the Creepy Dharma Initiative of Death, whispers in the jungle, Others…well, moving an Island isn't so weird anymore. Who knows where those two are going to move it. Ben's calm acceptance of Locke saying "We're going to move the Island" makes it inevitable. Move the Island.


	80. Sacrifice

**There's No Place Like Home, Part 3**

_Sacrifice_

Doing the right thing hasn't made him hate John less. Walking straight into the consequences of his own actions without flinching, pausing to apologize, handing over his power—those don't reduce the pain and anger and jealousy inside him at leaving his home, the place he's given his life and devotion to, in the hands of his rival. He's given everything—everything. And now John gets to take over. Lead his people. Protect his Island. _His._ That's why, apologies and sacrifice aside, he does what he does later. Because it's his Island. Not John Locke's. No matter what Jacob says.


	81. Aaron

**_Season 5_**

**Because You Left**

_Aaron_

At first she didn't know what to do. How could _she_ ever be a mother? She never wanted to be a mother. She didn't know what to do with the baby the first time she held him. Motherhood wasn't for someone like her, who couldn't stay in one place, especially motherhood of another's baby. But then she held him on the helicopter and protected him in the water and cried with fear when he wailed in the hot sun, and since she was the only one who could be his mother, she was his mother, and he was her son.


	82. Arbitrator

**The Lie**

_Arbitrator_

Juliet would never have thought of herself as a leader. Not ever. She used to think that the worst thing that could happen was facing her ex-husband. Which she did daily, and it never got any better. Now she'd been kidnapped, held hostage, turned into one of the people who held her hostage, watched all her patients die, helped hold innocent people hostage and manipulate them, learned to fight, killed a man, and survived for three years on an extremely creepy Island. And now she was a leader and arbitrator, because she knew her Island, and nothing scared her anymore.


	83. Paradox

**Jughead**

_Paradox_

A girl meets a boy. It happens every day. What doesn't happen every day is that she is his mother, though he's older than she is, and she has never met him before, but he has met her. Another thing that doesn't happen every day is that she takes him captive and marches him at gunpoint to a hydrogen bomb. Another thing that doesn't happen every day is that she meets him again twenty years later, only he has hardly changed at all, and she is pregnant with him. That's when she kills him. Later it happens all over again.


	84. Lawyer

**The Little Prince**

_Lawyer_

When will they ever learn that Ben keeps track of _everything?_ All the Candidates and their trajectories play through his mind like lines to be unsnarled or, occasionally, to snarl. One lawyer to defend Reyes, to flush Austen out into the open, to administrate a lawsuit. Norton doesn't know the full scope of what he's doing, or how many of the cases he handles are actually for Ben. All he knows is he's working for the Island. Ben keeps track of all the trajectories of all the people who work for the Island, too. He recruited most of them, after all.


	85. Nightmare Man

**This Place Is Death**

_Nightmare Man_

How do you fall in love with a man who scared you as a child?

You had nightmares about him. He was so thin and wild-haired and had these intense eyes, and he spoke to you of death.

Eventually you forgot him. Then you met a physicist, who was thin and wild-haired and had intense eyes, and he attracted you because he was so _strange_ and so passionate about everything and a little sad. But maybe you didn't forget after all, and maybe you loved him because he reminded you of the scary man who tried to save your life.


	86. Allies

**316**

_Allies_

Eloise and Ben had never had a smooth relationship. Both strong-willed leaders with a strong connection to the Island and a determination to do whatever necessary to protect it, they often butted heads. Sometimes Ben came out on top, sometimes Eloise. They rarely agreed about anything, and neither liked to defer to the other. But one thing was different than either of their relationships with Charles, which was that they were on the same side. They might fight each other tooth and nail, but let anyone oppose them or the sovereignty of the Island, and they turned and fought side-by-side.


	87. Conviction

**The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham**

_Conviction_

Conviction. Somehow he'd learned that over the years, and he wasn't quite sure how. The ability not just to look someone in the eyes and tell a good lie but to put the emotion of truth and passion into his own eyes and his voice and to actually _feel_ it as he was telling it. Truth or lie, it didn't matter. He could tell either with equal conviction. If you felt the emotion you were feigning to feel, people believed you, because people believed emotion. He never fooled himself into believing his own lies, but he came awfully close sometimes.


	88. Childbirth

**LaFleur**

_Childbirth_

They die. They all die. She's watched them die under her hands one after another. That's one of the worst things about this Island. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she weren't a doctor watching all her patients die. Maybe if she were just a scared woman held hostage, she'd end up like Cindy, who quietly accepted her Other status to protect the children. But she's a doctor whose every move has been failure and death. So the birth of little Ethan floods her with joy, even though she knows he's going to grow up to help enslave her.


	89. Hostiles

**Namaste**

_Hostiles_

He'd been here four years now, and for four years his heart had yearned after the Hostiles. Their way of life, nomadic, simple, unencumbered by machines and sonic fences and Stations. Their outlook on this increasingly wondrous Island, unafraid of its mysteries and protective of them, not trying to figure them all out and make Stations out of them. Their leader, a man who never changed, except to cut his hair, and who had looked at a frantic little boy and recognized his potential, seen what his own father had never seen. He longed for that life, with those people.


	90. Remember

**He's Our You**

_Remember_

_ Did you remember?_ Sayid wondered when the boy handed him the sandwich and the book about a shaman and his consciousness-altering drugs. _Did you remember when you were locked up, when I beat you, when you carefully tortured me more than I tortured you, that you once tried to make friends with me? Did you remember,_ he wondered as he aimed his gun at an innocent child, _that you lit a bus on fire and sent it crashing into your home so you could help me escape your own people? How could you remember, when now it will never happen?_


	91. Remember 2

**Whatever Happened, Happened**

_Prisoner_

_Did you remember?_ Juliet wondered, looking into the small, pale, sad face and the too-familiar big eyes hidden behind the glasses. _Did you remember that I lived in your town for three years, that I avoided you like the plague, that I watched you every time I saw you, that I fought to save your life just as hard as I fought to take it? Someone once told me that I look just like someone in your past. Was that someone me? Did I condemn myself to life on this Island and as your prisoner because I saved your life?_

* * *

_Creepazoid_

_Did you remember?_ Sawyer wondered as Richard took his small—but increasingly heavy—burden away into the Temple. _Did you remember when you locked me in a cage, when you beat me with your little stick, when you made me think my heart was going to explode? Did you remember this moment when we met and you were a child? Did you remember how I kept your dad from beating you up once? Did you remember how I carried you through the jungle and saved your life and helped turn you into the wacked creepazoid we all know and love?_


	92. Cupbearer

**Dead Is Dead**

_Cupbearer_

He'd read a book once, about spies in England, full of references he didn't understand, let alone the jargon, which he could barely recognize was jargon, because of his unfamiliarity with the culture. It was a book he'd found around Ben's house and was well into it before he realized it was about spies. But there was one bit of jargon he did understand. "Cupbearer." The man who was sort of assistant to the head of spies was called his cupbearer. Richard understood that. He had been Jacob's cupbearer. Now he was Ben's. Never Charles'. But still Jacob's, he insisted.


	93. Oversleep

**Some Like It Hoth**

_Oversleep _

It wasn't Desmond who told Hurley. Desmond told Locke, who told Kate, who told…who knows. Hurley just knew, because Hurley figured things out. He heard things and put them together. Desmond, he figured out, had missed pressing the button once. What was he doing? How do you miss something you've done every hundred and eight minutes for three years? And that was the day it happened, the day a hand reached up and knocked a plane out of the sky. So it was all Desmond's fault. But Hurley didn't blame him. Maybe he overslept. Some days you just oversleep, dude.


	94. Invasion

**The Variable**

_Invasion_

Phil wasn't the only one who noticed something odd about the new recruits. Seriously, was I the only one who noticed them huddling in groups with LaFleur and Juliet? Ducking in and out of each other's houses? You know what I think? Hostile takeover. Not by the Hostiles but by someone back home. The sudden arrival of LaFleur and his weird groupies, in such a way that Horace _had_ to let them stay, LaFleur's gradual takeover of the head security position, and now the new recruits and their secret meetings and the weird things that've been happening… Definitely an invasion.


	95. Tormenting

**Follow The Leader**

_Tormenting_

It was fun tormenting Ben. John Locke had missed out on a lot of things in his life, and now, in a way, he was getting to do them. Making Mr. High-and-Mighty Ben Linus subservient (really, the man had always been a little ridiculous), using Alex to force his submission, leading him straight back to his own people to show him how little he really meant, taunting him with knowledge of the Island that he would never have. This was perfect for John, as would be the final reveal of what was really going on. Oh, he was enjoying this.


	96. Choice

**The Incident**

_Choice_

She was never supposed to leave the Island. She saw that now. Three times she'd had a chance to leave. Once it was cruelly stolen from her, but twice—_twice_ she chose to stay. _Chose._ The first time it was for love, because for the first time she had something to stay for. Something here she wanted more than she wanted what was back there. But the second time she chose to stay because she realized something else was at work, something bigger than her happiness. So she turned around to help, and when she died, she was not surprised.


	97. Candidate

**_Season 6_**

**LAX**

_Candidate_

Jacob already knew who it was going to be. Maybe he had known all along. This compassionate one, who saw things no one else paid attention to, who cared about the well-being of people, who always had a new idea. This Candidate would be better than Jacob, do the job better, see the job as more than just protecting the Island. Ben had taught him that you had to take care of the people too. It was too late for Jacob to change his ways of doing things, but it wouldn't be too late for the new person in charge.


	98. Translator

**What Kate Does**

_Translator_

Lennon had been a gift from heaven. All those years ago, when Jacob made him protector of the Temple, Dogen really hadn't spoken English very well. He could understand it some, because his son had studied it, but he couldn't speak. How can a man lead when he cannot be understood? So he had wished for a translator, and then there was Lennon. A conscript, unlike Dogen, who understood nothing about what was going on except that the leader needed his linguistic skills. They built up a partnership, over the years. Now Lennon would die for the Island, like Dogen.


	99. Confession

**The Substitute**

_Confession_

They say confession is good for the soul. Ben doesn't know about that. It certainly wouldn't have helped him when he was the leader on the Island. "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't have the slightest idea what Jacob wants. I'm just wandering blindly around in circles." That would have gone over well.

But now he confesses. That there was something in John to be admired. That he was in many ways the better man. That Ben's jealousy came from a secret sense of inferiority, and hurt. That he killed him. And that, in the end, he is sorry he did.


	100. Crazy

**Lighthouse**

_Crazy_

Justin had lost two friends to the crazy woman over the years. Seemed like there always had to be a crazy woman on the Island, picking off his people one by one. First the French woman, now the Australian woman, both obsessed with children they'd lost. Not that they'd had anything to do with that! Well, he had heard a rumor that Ben's people had something to do with the French woman's kid, so maybe they'd taken the Australian's as well. But that didn't assuage the rage at the friends he'd lost. One was the girl he'd wanted to marry.


	101. Cindy

**Sundown**

_Cindy_

It was easy to leave the shelter of the Temple and its protector. All along this crazy, three-year journey of plane crash, survival on a South Pacific island, pursuit and kidnapping by insane people in the jungle, the revelation of a strange sort of civilization in the wilderness, three years of coming to understand and sympathize with the people she'd thought insane and vicious (you had to sympathize, or you'd go crazy yourself), Cindy's main priority had been protecting the children. She'd become their mother. She understood how the Island worked now, and it was the only thing to do.


	102. Forgiveness

**Dr. Linus**

_Forgiveness_

Ilana forgave Ben for a complicated series of reasons. Jacob was a hard man sometimes. He gave you little choice about things, even when it seemed like he was. Ilana could only imagine what it was like growing up on his Island. And then there was the story about the daughter. She had never heard anything truer than the heartbreak and self-hatred she heard in Ben's voice.

But really, she forgave him because he needed to be forgiven. He came from a world where forgiveness didn't exist, but she came from a world where it did, and she forgave him.


	103. Babysitting

**Recon**

_Babysitting_

Being Jim's partner has never been easy, but Miles knows how to deal with not easy. Having a dad who once worked on a big secret project and went just a little crazy after it ended, a mom who died while he was in high school, and this little tendency to hear dead people's voices gives you a certain ability to deal with the day-to-day things like your partner's temper and tendency to go off by himself to brood. But Miles has finally had enough, because he became a cop to help those dead people, not to babysit Jim Ford.


	104. Peasant

**Ab Aeterno**

_Peasant_

At first he thought it was an easy thing, to manipulate a peasant. He'd lived with peasants and thought he knew them. Simple-minded people, worshipping what they couldn't understand, whether it was worthy of worship or not, slavishly obeying, with sad, squalid, dirty lives and no hope or wish of anything more. Those were the peasants he knew. Thought he knew. So this slave on this ship Jacob had brought here would be no different. But he hadn't anticipated Jacob being a better manipulator than he. And he hadn't anticipated the slave, another peasant, having a mind of his own.


	105. Dream World

**The Package**

_Dream World_

Desmond opened his eyes and looked into Sayid's face. For just a second he didn't find that strange, and then he found it horrifying, and it was slightly comforting to go back into the dream world he had been in for he didn't know how long. He remembered the fight, with that Linus man from the church, getting shot, the hospital, then nothing more. He didn't remember Sayid. He closed his eyes and happily crawled back into his dream world where he and Penny and Charlie were never bothered by anything or anyone to do with the Island ever again.


	106. Meant

**Happily Ever After**

_Meant_

She couldn't say why she agreed to coffee. A strange man walks up to her, knows her name, smiles like he knows her, shakes her hand, and faints. So then she promptly agrees to go to coffee with him? Was she out of her mind?

But it was about the way he smiled, as if all his life he had been following something that led him here, to her, and the way he said, "Desmond," and a chill ran up her spine, and the way something in her memory cried out, "This is destiny! This is why you came here!"


	107. Hugo

**Everybody Loves Hugo**

_Hugo_

Why Hugo? Why not Hugo? Libby's crazy. In a way, that makes her a better judge of men than most. She knows what it looks like when a man is willing to take advantage of her precarious mental state, what it feels like when that is all they can see. She's been mocked and patronized. What she hasn't been is treated like a lady and made to feel she's doing a man an honor by liking him. She's never had her craziness simply accepted as another part of her, rather than as the only thing that's worth noticing. Until Hugo.


	108. Swashbuckling

**The Last Recruit**

_Swashbuckling_

It's odd how you can get used to doing just about anything. Before she met Charles Widmore (six years ago?), Zoe was a pretty normal geophysicist. One of the best, of course, and just a little obsessive about certain subjects in her field, but on the whole, normal. Now she's running errands for Mr. Widmore, carrying a gun around a crazy Island, going undercover with the enemy, walking into the enemy camp to deliver ultimatums, taking people captive…and enjoying it. She likes the sort of swashbuckling lifestyle. It's as if she suddenly realized she's always wanted to be Indiana Jones.


	109. Helen

**The Candidate**

_Helen_

It's not been an easy life, dealing with John Locke and his neuroses. He has many. Fears that his father doesn't really love him. Fears that she might leave him. Fears that, after all, he's really not worth anything. But sometimes she thinks, _It could be worse._ Sometimes she thinks she can see John the way he sometimes thinks of himself. She sees him embittered, angry, weak, afraid, alone, chasing fantasies to make up for always being unloved. She thinks sometimes it could so easily have gone that way. But it didn't, and she loves him, neuroses, wheelchair, and all.


	110. Legacy

**Across the Sea**

_Legacy_

She was a simple woman, with simple needs. Live, take care of the Island, and perpetuate her kind. So when she saw another woman who had what she needed to do it, she did not hesitate to take it.

She taught her sons that this was what you did. To protect yourself, to protect the Island, you took what you needed and killed whoever was in your way. From her sons, others learned it: Richard, Charles, Ben. The evil and power struggles she tried to forestall by the murder of a woman she helped perpetuate. Mother's legacy to the Island.


	111. Purpose

**What They Died For**

_Purpose_

Desmond had never known purpose before. He'd known stumbling into things and running away from things. He'd known desperately trying to protect things and doing things in the fear that other things would happen if he didn't. But not a deep, secure understanding and purpose. Not this firm, steady knowledge of what to do and how to do it, where to go. Who to find and where, what to say to them. And why. A job to do that wasn't about himself and his own fears. Nothing had ever given him peace like this. Nothing but knowing what was true.


	112. Captain

**The End**

_Captain_

There was nowhere to go. Nowhere that wasn't away from where he had always wanted to be. Ben had spent his whole life trying desperately to be captain of this ship, his Island. On the Island, he wanted to protect it—and, yes, own it. Away from the Island he only wanted to get back. And now, now that it was sinking, how could he desert it? What was there for him anywhere else? Unlike Charles, he'd never tried to build a life for himself elsewhere. He had lived, loved, killed, suffered here. He would go down with his Island.


	113. Home

**The End**

_Home_

Together they sit with Desmond, Ben and the new man in charge, two such unlikely companions, and they make choices. The choices will affect the future of the Island, but the only thing that matters to Desmond is the choice they make for him. He can go home. He need never come back. For the first time in his life, he can have a life. He can be with his wife without fear, without running. He can raise his son in Scotland, where he belongs. His imprisonment by the Island is over. The new man in charge has freed him.

**_The end_**


End file.
